Inquirer Visayas
Negros bird slaughter raises outcry
By Carla Gomez
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:51:00 02/02/2008
BACOLOD CITY – Though environmentalists are angry that birds are being killed in flocks and the slaughter bragged about on the Internet, the hunters in Bacolod City are getting away with it.
“We hunted down the birds for the fun of it,” one city resident said.
The resident, who agreed to be interviewed on condition that his name is withheld, was among those seen in online photos with fellow hunters showing off the birds they killed, which included endangered wild ducks.
One photo showed him with dead snipes, a wading bird with a long straight beak. It was taken four years ago by one Gino Castandielo, who said both of them were members of the “Bacolod Air Rifle Hunting Club.”
“There is no Bacolod Air Rifle Hunting Club. We are just a loose group of people who hunt together for birds and the name was just placed there by the person who posted our pictures,” the resident said.
He said he was angry with Castandielo for posting the photos on the Internet and demanded that these be removed.
The resident said he had long stopped hunting because of his tight work schedule, but he knew of about 20 hunters from the city and a lot more from other parts of Negros Occidental who had been shooting the birds with air rifles.
Hunting Day
The birds are usually hunted down in the towns of Pontevedra, Hinigaran, Ilog, Valladolid and Murcia, and in the cities of Bago, Kabankalan and La Carlota, he said.
He said he used to go hunting with friends on Sundays. “Hunting for birds has a lot of challenge, we camouflaged ourselves to go undetected and to get a good shot.”
Until recently, he said he was not aware of the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, which prohibits the shooting down of birds. “Many of my fellow hunters did not know about it,” he said.
Asked if he was aware of the biodiversity damage they were causing, he insisted that the group only kill birds considered “pests” to farmers. “We ate our catch; we did not sell them,” he added.
Wild ducks (Philippine Mallard or Philippine Duck Anas luzonica), for example, eat fingerlings in fishponds, while the tokmos (ground doves) and korokokoks (zebra doves) destroy crops, he claimed.
This is, however, disputed by environmentalists who are now calling for a wider awareness of the damage caused by bird hunting.
Endemic to RP
According to Pavel Hospodarsky, a volunteer consultant of the Biodiversity Conservation Center of the Negros Forest and Ecological Foundation Inc. (NFEFI), the wild ducks are endemic to the Philippines and classified as vulnerable, with only 5,000 to 10,000 birds left in the country.
In fact, they help the farmers because they eat snails and worms that ruin crops, said Gerry Ledesma, NFEFI chair.
“The ducks and other birds being shot down are symbiotic to the chain of life,” Hospodarsky said.
Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri, author of Republic Act No. 9147 or the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, agreed.
“Losing any of the (wild ducks and birds) to extinction would be breaking a link in the chain of life not only of those birds but of all of us,” Zubiri said in reaction to reports of the bird killings.
Gov’t investigation
More than a month after the environmentalists raised an outcry over the slaughter of birds, government investigation has yet to produce tangible results.
Josef Sagemuller, who has been involved in bird conservation in Negros, said he accidentally found the website of the “Bacolod Air Rifle Hunting Club” when he was browsing Google for bird information.
“It was like being stabbed through the heart. Hundreds and hundreds of massacred doves of all kinds, mallards, whistling ducks and snipes. It was unbelievable seeing all these,” Sagemuller said.
“One man in the pictures had more dead ducks around his neck than I have ever seen in the wild. This is a screaming injustice and decidedly illegal,” he said.
What was even more disconcerting, he said, was that hunting clubs proliferate throughout the Philippines, from Albay, Isabela and Coron (northern Palawan) to Negros, Cebu and Mindanao. “This is not just a local phenomenon, it’s a national one,” he said.
Online petition
Sagemuller decided to initiate over the Internet (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/revolting-local-bird-massacre) a petition titled “Stop this Philippine endemic bird massacre” to stir public support to force the government into action and “bring these criminals to justice.”
“By signing this petition, we will show the media and the Philippine government that we will not tolerate the exploitation of our endemic wildlife by anyone and express our indignation at the slaughter of innocent animals for sport,” he said.
In a separate petition, the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines said that “for as long as vulnerable and endemic species whose numbers are dwindling before our very eyes and whose habitats are fast being taken over by development that is unfriendly to the wild co-inhabitants of this archipelago, any form of sports hunting should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
It appealed to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and to the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau to demonstrate speedy and effective enforcement of the wildlife protection law.
Air guns
Damaso Fuentes, chief of the DENR regional office’s protected areas and wildlife section, said he had directed the provincial environment and natural resources office (Penro) to act on the matter.
According to Penro head Livino Duran, the online photos were taken in Pontevedra, but the identities of those involved in the killings had yet to be established.
Ledesma is hoping that an ordinance is passed banning air guns in the province.
Law enforcers should also be made aware of the prohibition against bird hunting, he said. The unabated sale of dead birds along the highway, sometimes near police outposts, is a telling sign, he said.
Zubiri said he would seek a review of the penalties to know whether these had been applied correctly. The Wildlife Act, which was enacted in 2001, carries a minimum of five days imprisonment and P200 fine, and maximum imprisonment of eight years and P5 million in fine.
The fines should have been increased by 10 percent every three years, the senator said.
While the country has a lot of very good laws, the problem is in the enforcement, said Ma. Renee Lorica of the Fauna and Flora International-Philippines Biodiversity Conservation Program.
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